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    1892
    1892
    1892
    Ebook133 pages2 hours

    1892

    By Paul Butler

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    About this ebook

    In 1892, critically acclaimed novelist Paul Butler plunges the reader into 19th century St. John’s, its light and its shade . . . An obscure servant, Kathleen, yearns for her home in Ireland. A mysterious scientist, Dr. Glenwood, believes he can be the first to bring a new photographic discovery to the world. A stable hand, Tommy Fitzpatrick, battles inner demons as he tries to win Kathleen’s heart. These collective struggles will soon erupt to change the fate of an entire city. Long listed for the 2009 ReLit Awards
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherFlanker Press
    Release dateJun 27, 2008
    ISBN9781771172141
    1892
    Author

    Paul Butler

    A former federal prosecutor, Paul Butler provides legal commentary for CNN, NPR, and MSNBC and writes for the New York Times and Politico. A law professor at Georgetown University, he is the author of Let’s Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice (The New Press) and lives in Washington, D.C.

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      Book preview

      1892 - Paul Butler

      Praise for Paul Butler

      St. John’s: City of Fire

      It’s no easy task to make a long ago emergency interesting to a modern reader, but Butler brings his novelist’s skill to the newspaper reports, eyewitness accounts, and archival information, creating vivid images of the city and her inhabitants.

      Atlantic Books Today

      Nageira

      Butler’s prose is smooth and clean; the story moves forward vigorously, with patches of poetry.

      The Globe and Mail

      [A] . . . brilliant exploration of one of Newfoundland’s central mythological figures set within highly-crafted, well-written parallel stories that hinge on twists of fate and an intricate plot structure.

      Atlantic Books Today

      Easton’s Gold

      Butler is an invigorating writer, keeping the reader in suspense, but moving the story along at an exhilarating pace . . . And finally, Butler is a fine stylist, one who knows how to provide apt images that vivify thought and action . . .

      Canadian Book Review Annual

      . . . Butler builds solid suspense and healthy narrative momentum through a focus on fundamentals: efficient storytelling, keen attention to characterization and fealty to the mysteries of the past and their influence on the present . . . Easton’s Gold is . . . a compelling novel which often surprises and satisfies.

      The Globe and Mail

      Easton

      [Easton] is exceptionally well-written . . . . Throughout the novel, the atmosphere of threatening danger that permeates the story will hold the reader spellbound until the end.

      The Telegram

      Stoker’s Shadow

      "Paul Butler understands very well what underlies this gothic tale . . . Butler’s prose style is often lush – he describes post-Victorian London quite eloquently . . ."

      The Globe and Mail

      "Though the vampires in Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula cast no shadows, the author and the book certainly do. In Stoker’s Shadow, Paul Butler explores this phenomenon in a unique blending of biography and dreamscape."

      Dr. Elizabeth Miller, author of Dracula: Sense and Nonsense and A Dracula Handbook

      Rogues and Heroes

      ". . . a very well-written and interesting collection of stories . . ."

      The Telegram

      Pennywell Books

      St. John’s

      2008

      Copyright

      Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

      Butler, Paul, 1964--

      Cataloguing information is available from the National Archives of Canada.

      Also issued in print format.

      ISBN 978-1-897317-28-0 (print) 978-1-77117-214-1 (epub) 978-1-771172-15-8 (kindle)

      —————

      © 2008 by Paul Butler

      All rights reserved. No part of the work covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic or mechanical—without the written permission of the publisher. Any request for photocopying, recording, taping, or information storage and retrieval systems of any part of this book shall be directed to Access Copyright, The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 800, Toronto, ON M5E 1E5. This applies to classroom use as well.

      Printed in Canada

      Cover Design: Adam Freake

      Flanker Press Ltd.

      PO Box 2522, Station C

      St. John’s, NL

      Canada

      Telephone: (709) 739-4477 Fax: (709) 739-4420 Toll-free: 1-866-739-4420

      www.flankerpress.com

      We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for our publishing activities; the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $24.3 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada; the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, Department of Tourism, Culture and Recreation.

      "Heav’n but the vision of fulfill’d Desire

      And Hell the Shadow from a Soul on Fire,"

      The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

      July 29, l892, the Royal Gazette

      A most fiendish act was perpetrated last night by some villain or villains at present unknown, who went to the stable of Mr. Timothy Brine, head of Long’s Hill, and cut the tongues out of his two fine horses. What could have prompted this diabolical act we know not, but it is certainly the duty of every right-thinking citizen to assist the authorities in bringing the miscreant to justice, and to employ every legitimate means to stamp out such atrocities, which are a disgrace to any civilized community. Apart from this aspect of the matter, the loss is a very serious one to the man, Brine.

      _________

      A discharged man-servant of Mr. T. Brine, named Fitzpatrick, was arrested this morning on suspicion of having cut out the horses’ tongues.

      Prologue

      AFTER

      July 28, 1892

      Tommy

      The music-box ditty is reawakened by a distant echo of hooves somewhere down on Water Street. The tune jingles in my ears like coxcomb bells – All things bright and beautiful. All creatures great and small – keeping pace with clop-clop rhythm. Both sounds are part of the marionette dance sweeping through the night.

      Tourists, sightseers, and newspapermen are scanning the wreckage of the city below – a favoured pastime these last three weeks – giving lofty expression, no doubt, to a horror they don’t feel. Those who suffer turn their back upon ruin; they don’t stare and shake their heads in a demonstration of grief.

      Each little flower that opens. Each tiny bird that sings . . . The sound is too insistent, too perfectly metred to be joyful; it’s a clockwork machine disguised as a velvet-winged angel.

      Other than the faraway cabs and the phantom melody, the city is silent. Most nights since the inferno have been like this. The sky is vast and blue with strings of clouds and an ominous hush – a scene within crystal. But always, no matter how clear the air, the bitter stench of ash is in the atmosphere – an unwholesome, lung-clogging cocktail of burned wood and vaporized stone.

      Shadows duck in and out of the broken ribs of chimneys, would-be thieves or perhaps the ghosts of thieves, spirits who cannot cease the petty plunder they undertook in life. Scorched lime tingles in my nostrils as I tramp up the hill. It clings to the back of my throat too, and I spit into the gravel near my feet. There’s no one to admonish me here. There are no eyes on me at all, and part of me regrets this. At least during the day when gentlemen tut and the ladies whisper, I feel a snarl rising up inside me, a belief there is something left for me to rage against. I haven’t spat at one of them yet, or even held their stare for longer than a moment. But they see my insolence clearly enough when I fail to slacken my pace or touch my cap. That will do for now.

      I’ve picked up a handy amount of work since it all happened, carting and hauling here and there. It seems that many people don’t know me by sight, and I’m often working well above my usual wages. Why I should bother with money and work, or with hanging around at all anymore, I’m not exactly sure. I thought want would cease with the death of desire. But a body, I have found, is a despicable, wretched thing. Its heart continues to beat, its veins to pump, its gut to hunger and its throat to thirst long after higher yearnings have burned away. I’ve become a thrall to these base, monotonous instincts. The withered remains of my spirit are trapped within a hulking form that tramps without reason through the ruined city.

      What earthly use are you, Fitzpatrick? Father Ryan asked me before my world spun out of control. The old man’s tired and bloodshot eyes held such belief, such conviction, that they almost made me believe. If he could so easily see through my Sunday clothes, through my brushed and flattened hair, my soft manners, my self-imposed learning regimen – a book a week by lamplight or candle – to the dark and clammy spaces of my soul, then how could I be so sure he was not serving some all-knowing, all-seeing spirit as he claimed? With his piercing eye and his question, the old priest had given me a glimpse into a paradise to which I was excluded . . . The rich man in his castle. The poor man at his gate. He made them high or lowly. And ordered his estate . . .

      My tongue craves liquor as a lizard’s skin must crave the sun. I press my fingers onto the knife blade in my pocket to remind me. Drink yourself into oblivion, the metal edge says; drink until you will never wake, but only after you keep your promise to yourself.

      Beyond the broken cross – the upright and beam of the former stable – I spy the rippling haunches of O’Brien’s favourite mare. The beast is happy in the moonlight, gently frolicking in the circle her rope allows . . . All things bright and beautiful . . .

      O’Brien is away again. Those neighbours whose homes still stand must be asleep. Beyond the ruins, the houses’ eyes are blank. I pace softly over the turf and feel the arches of my feet tremble at the touch of half-burned sod. The mare dips her head and looks over her shoulder. Her companion whinnies happily. I reach toward the rope, my hand gliding like some white bird, disconnected from myself, until I feel the rough hemp in my palm. A huge eye stares at me, curious and uncomprehending . . . There, girl, there, my soft voice entreats. My free hand comes down on her warm, hard chest. I feel the pulse of a giant vein and the horse chugs like a happy steam engine. She knows me. Tenderness rises with the terror and rage. My head comes to rest against a rippling neck muscle . . . He gave us eyes to see them. And lips that we might tell . . .

      Shush, I say out loud to the beast as one hand fondles the rope and the other draws out the knife, shush, my beauty. Her warm coat has become damp against my cheek and I realize this must be my tears . . . How great is God Almighty Who has made this all so well . . .

      One

      BEFORE

      July 1, 1892

      Kathleen

      I caught the proprietor’s nod as I lay my fingers on the little metal box painted with plump-breasted robins and shining, red berries. I was curious but there were others shuffling and whispering in the shop and I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. The proprietor with his half-moon spectacles and his nervous smile seemed like a mild man, and it was to please him, rather than to hear the tune, that I lifted the lid.

      The melody was lovely, like

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